Primarily the social factors that enable individuals and communities to immediately respond to heat waves and flood events, such as income, insurance, personal mobility, fear of crime, community networks and local knowledge.

Lindley, S., O’Neill, J., Kandeh, J., Lawson, N., Christian, R. & O’Neill M. (2011) “Climate change, justice and vulnerability”, Joseph Rowntree Foundation Report, York

Which places are disadvantaged?

The Adaptation Sub-Committee (ASC) is a sub-committee of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), established under the UK’s Climate Change Act 2008.  The ASC provides expert advice and scrutiny through the CCC, ensuring that the Government’s programme for adaptation enables the UK to prepare effectively for the impacts of climate change.

From Ecocities

More about the Committee on Climate Change

(See also fuel poverty gap). The sum of the fuel poverty gap of all fuel poor households, or when talking about a specific subset of fuel poor households (e.g. those living in private rented accommodation), the sum of the fuel poverty gap for all households in that subset.

Annual exceedance probability (AEP) describes the probability of an event (e.g. a flood of a given magnitude) occurring in any given year.  AEP is approximately equivalent to the inverse of return period (in years).  For example, 3.3% AEP refers to a return period of 1 in 30 years.  However, the return period is not the inverse of AEP for very frequent events (see Sayers et al., 2015).

A device, such as a perforated screen or louvers, for shutting out direct or excessive sunlight.

Oxford Dictionary, 2014

The process of increasing the carbon content of a reservoir/pool other than the atmosphere¹ There are several ways that this can occur, including through industrial techniques. However, in the context of green infrastructure this primarily refers to natural processes, e.g. how “trees remove carbon in the form of CO2 from the atmosphere and store it as carbon in the form of wood”².   

IPCC (2007) Glossary 

Forestry Commission (2014) 

The Civil Contingencies Act, and accompanying non-legislative measures, delivers a single framework for civil protection in the UK. The Act is separated into 2 substantive parts: local arrangements for civil protection (Part 1); and emergency powers (Part 2). The Act sets out the basis for emergency planning in the UK.

Civil Contingencies Act (2004)

Climate disadvantage is a function of (a) the likelihood and degree of exposure to a hazard and (b) individual or group vulnerability with regards to such hazards. It can be estimated and mapped through the combination of representations of hazard-exposure and representations of socio-spatial vulnerability. Also see flood and heat disadvantage.

Lindley, S., O’Neill, J., Kandeh, J., Lawson, N., Christian, R. & O’Neill M. (2011) “Climate change, justice and vulnerability”, Joseph Rowntree Foundation Report, York

Where are the most climate disadvantaged communities?

Climate projections expressed in terms of absolute values (as opposed to the relative value expressed in future climate change projections). It is a  projection of the response of the climate system to scenarios based upon climate model simulations and past observations. Climate change projections are expressed as an absolute future climate, for example, that future average daily temperature in the summer will be 34°C for a given location, time period and emissions scenario.

From Ecocities, based on the UK Climate Projections 2009 website.

Flooding from the sea arising when tidal surge, wave action or a combination of both overtop or overflow the shoreline boundary.

Collective switching schemes involve a group of households banding together to negotiate a better deal with gas and electricity suppliers, with the lead organisation (which could be a local authority, non-profit organisation or business) acting as an intermediary agent.

Flood Warden Schemes are owned and run by members of the Parish Council or the Local Community and supported by the Environment Agency. They consist of nominated volunteers who receive direct flood warnings from the Agency and pass these on to their neighbours. The number of flood wardens will depend on the size of the community and may be operated by a single individual.

Environment Agency leaflet on Flood Warden Schemes

Compounded injustice refers to the way that different forms of injustice can combine to place additional and excessive disadvantage on individuals or groups.

Local areas containing around 500-1,000 residents with similar social characteristics. Data zones (DZ) are used by the Scottish Government for reporting social statistics, for example from the census.  

Each of ten equal groups into which a population can be divided according to the distribution of values of a particular variable.

Oxford Dictionaries website

Carbon emissions resulting directly through an individual’s own actions: household energy use and transport.

Systemic Flood Disadvantage (SFD) provides a ‘relative’ interpretation of disadvantage and enables bias in the flood risk faced by the most vulnerable when compared to the average to be explored. For example, SFD uses the average for all neighbourhoods within lenses of interest – i.e. UK, the coastal floodplains and cities in decline. As such, SFD measures the degree to which FRM policy (or its implementation in practice) can be considered to deliver a fair and socially just outcome. 

In a district heating scheme, instead of each property in an area having its own heating system, heat is generated at a central point and distributed to properties through a network of insulated pipes. Heat can be generated more efficiently in a district heating system, compared to within individual properties.  

Pollutant (in this case carbon) releases represented per head of population or per monetary unit.

A policy which requires the main energy suppliers to fund energy efficiency and heating system improvements in homes. It has three strands: the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERO), the Carbon Saving Communities Obligation (CSCO), and the Home Heat Cost Reduction Obligation (HHCRO). CERO provides wall and loft insulation to any household with a suitable property. CSCO provides insulation to households living in specific low-income areas and households which are both receiving specific benefits and living in rural areas. HHCRO provides measures which reduce heating costs (including replacement boilers) to households receiving specific benefits, unless they live in social rented accommodation.

A situation where a household has high energy needs relative to its ability to pay for energy

Epidemiology is the study of how often diseases occur in different groups of people and why. Epidemiological information is used to plan and evaluate strategies to prevent illness and as a guide to the management of patients in whom disease has already developed.

The British Medical Journal

A statistical process that normalises or levels incomes and costs to account for different compositions and numbers of people in any given household. In the fuel poverty context, the main objective is to account for larger households that generally have higher fuel bills and therefore require higher overall incomes to maintain the same quality of life as smaller households.

Office for National Statistics

The expected annual damage is the average of flood damages calculated over a number of events. The total damages for each event is then multiplied by the event probability to provide the annual damage.  This is then summed for all return periods to provide the Expected Annual Damage for all events. 

The occurrence of a value of a weather or climate variable above (or below) a threshold value near the upper (or lower) ends of the range of observed values of the variable. This covers events which are very unusual in terms of baseline climate.

IPCC, 2012: Glossary of terms. In: Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation [Field, C.B., V. Barros, T.F. Stocker, D. Qin, D.J. Dokken, K.L. Ebi, M.D. Mastrandrea, K.J. Mach, G.-K. Plattner, S.K. Allen, M. Tignor, and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. A Special Report of Working Groups I and II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, and New York, NY, USA, pp. 555-564.

The Flood and Water Management Act provides for better, more comprehensive management of flood risk for people, homes and businesses, helps safeguard community groups from unaffordable rises in surface water drainage charges, and protects water supplies to the consumer.

Government guidance and information on flood risk management and surface water management

Flood Action Groups are ‘grass-roots’ community groups which provide a link between local communities and the range of partnership authorities involved in flood risk management. The groups help to support knowledge exchange and the adoption and maintenance of emergency response and wider adaptation measures. The National Flood Forum has a step-by-step guide to how to set up a flood action group.

Adapted from National Flood Forum, 2014

An area of land that could be flooded by any source of flooding (used here interchangeable with floodplain).

Conventionally, the flood risk of an element at risk is considered to be a function of flood hazard (chance of occurring), flood exposure (extent and nature of contact) and flood vulnerability (susceptibility to damage). However, it can be used to represent the likelihood and extent of exposure, as in the case of Environment Agency flood risk maps.

The area of land where water flows in time of flood (arising from any source of flooding, coastal, fluvial or surface water) or would flow but for the presence of structures and other flood controls. The limits of floodplain are notionally infinite, and are therefore defined by the maximum flood extent resulting from a given return period storm. Here, for practical reasons, the floodplain is defined by the 1:1000-year return period in the absence of any defences that may exist.  

A household is defined as fuel poor in England if it has low income and high energy costs i.e. if a household:

1. has required fuel costs that are above average (the national median level); and

2. were they to spend that amount they would be left with a residual income below the official poverty line.

This new definition follows the Hills review of fuel poverty for the Government and replaces the old definition of fuel poverty from the Homes and Energy Conservation Act (2000) and the UK’s first Fuel Poverty Strategy (2001) whereby a household was defined as ‘fuel poor’ if it needed to spend more than 10% of its income on fuel to maintain a satisfactory heating regime.

Fuel poverty statistics

Green infrastructure is “an interconnected network of green space that conserves natural ecosystem values and functions and provides associated benefits to human populations”¹. It can be comprised of natural or semi-natural areas of vegetation, water bodies and other non built-up land surface covers and can exist as managed or unmanaged, public or private and small or large zones ²,³. Together they provide multiple and often inter-connected ‘ecosystem services’: including the supply of food and fuel (‘provisioning’); flood, temperature and erosion control (‘regulating’); opportunities for recreation and relaxation (‘social/cultural’) and areas for biodiversity (‘supporting’)⁴.  Their importance is recognised by national government with an initial and follow-on national ecosystem services assessment and a programme of related activities⁵,⁶.

1. Benedict, MA, McMahon, ET (2001) page 5 Green Infrastructure: Smart Conservation for the 21st Century. The Conservation Fund. Sprawlwatch Clearinghouse Mono-graph Series.
2. Jones, S. and Somper, C. (2014) The role of green infrastructure in climate change adaptation in London The Geographical Journal, Vol. 180, No. 2, pp. 191–196
3. Tzoulas, K. Korpela, K., Venn, S., Yli-Pelkonen, V., Kazmierczak, A., Niemela, J. and James, P. (2007) Promoting ecosystem and human health in urban areas using Green Infrastructure: A literature review Landscape and Urban Planning 81 167–178
4. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) Ecosystems and Human Well-being: A Framework for Assessment. Island Press
5. UKNEA (2011) UK National Ecosystem Assessment: Chapter 10 ‘Urban’. 
6. https://www.gov.uk/ecosystems-services

Flooding from the ground caused by high groundwater levels in aquifers. Note: Groundwater flooding is not considered.

The Health and Social Care (2012) Act represents a major re-organisation of health and social care. It encompasses clinically led commissioning, support for innovative practices, allowances for a greater voice for patients, a new focus on public health, more accountability and re-structured management.

Health and Social Care Act Factsheet

The maps of heat disadvantage show how heat-related social vulnerability combines with the potential for exposure to heat-related events. They account for both the likelihood of coming into contact with high temperatures and also the severity of negative impacts on the health and wellbeing of local communities that could occur as a result of that contact.

ClimateJust

Heat socio-spatial vulnerability refers to mapped social vulnerability with respect to heat-related hazard. The map shows how the personal, social and environmental factors which help to explain uneven impacts on people and communities come together in particular neighbourhoods. It shows where negative social impacts are more likely.

ClimateJust

The Heatwave Plan for England is a plan intended to protect the population from heat-related harm to health.

Heatwave Plan for England 2014

The official measure of relative deprivation for neighbourhoods in England.  

Intergenerational justice concerns the ways in which burdens, benefits and responsibilities are distributed across generations. In the context of climate change problems of intergenerational injustice are raised by the extent to which future generations will be harmed by the extreme climate impacts that result from current emissions.

JSNAs “analyse the health needs of populations to inform and guide commissioning of health, well-being and social care services within local authority areas.¹ They provide ‘a comprehensive analysis of the current and future needs and assets’ of local areas. Assets are defined as ‘anything that can be used to improve outcomes and impact on the wider determinants of health. This could be facilities such as a One Stop Shop, or green spaces; but also local businesses, local providers with a specific expertise, or capacity within the local community, such as lunch clubs for isolated older people. This includes needs and assets relevant to health, social care and public health across the full lifecourse, covering children, young people and adults; and involves an analysis of the wider determinants of health’.²

1. NHS confederation, 2011
2. DoH (2011) Joint Strategic Needs Assessment and joint health and wellbeing strategies explained

LCLIP is a simple tool designed to help organisations to assess their exposure to the weather. It can be used as a standalone tool, or as a step in a risk-based framework such as the Adaptation Wizard.¹ An online version is now available through Kent County Council’s Severe Weather Impacts Monitoring System (SWIMS) tool.²

1. UKCIP website
2. Kent County Council. The SWIMS tool is now hosted by Climate UK.

Statutory powers to devolve more decision-making around planning and housing to the local level, including to local communities. 

A plain English Guide to the Act 

Full text of the Act 

Compact areas with around 1,000-3,000 residents with similar social characteristics. LSOAs are used in England and Wales for reporting social statistics, for example the census.

A document that describes the general principles of an agreement between parties, but does not amount to a substantive contract.

Collins Dictionary, 2014

Guidance for local planning authorities and decision-takers, both in drawing up plans and making decisions about planning applications.

Defined here as a spatial unit covering Lower Super Output Areas (LSOAs) in England and Wales, Data Zone (DZs) in Scotland and Super Output Areas (SOAs) in Northern Ireland.

Defined here based on a series of indicators that provide insight into the inherent social characteristics of a neighbourhood that make a community more or less vulnerable to a loss of well-being should a flood occur.

Activities undertaken with one or more organisations where there are shared objectives or goals.

In England, usually referred to as urban flooding ‘caused by rainfall overwhelming drainage capacity’ (Parliamentary Office of Science andTechnology, 2007, p. 1)  Also called surface water flooding.

Houston, D (2011), p88.

A ‘poverty premium’ occurs when the detriment to households of having low incomes is compounded by them having to pay more than others for essential goods and services.  For example, households on low incomes can have a heavily reduced choice in term of utility tariffs meaning that, despite relatively low consumption they pay more on average per unit consumed. This may include paying additional charges or higher prices because of the way they carry out transactions.

Hirsch, D. (2013) Addressing the Poverty Premium: Approaches to regulation. A report published by Consumer Futures with support from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Procedural justice concerns the ways in which decisions are made, in particular who has the power to affect policy responses to climate change and how decision making procedures benefit and burden different individuals and groups.

Adapted from the ClimateJust presentation Why are socially just responses to climate change important?

Healthy lives, healthy people: Improving outcomes and supporting transparency¹ outlines aims for public health and provides indicators through which progress towards meeting them can be measured. Indicators are organised into four domains and updated quarterly².

1. Public Health Outcomes Framework 2013-2016
2. Overarching Indicators

More information on health and vulnerability and what responses can be considered is available here

The entity that may be harmed by a flood. For example, in the event of heavy rainfall (the source), flood water may propagate across the floodplain (the pathway) and inundate housing/householders (the receptor) that may suffer material damage (the harm or consequence).

A new metric proposed here that reflects the ratio of the uninsured loss to income. The REP is calculated as (1- insurance penetration) x Expected Annual Damages (direct residential) per household within the floodplain / Average Income per household within the neighbourhood.

The risk that remains after accounting for the performance of all FRM actions (i.e. measures to reduce the chance of flooding and those taken to reduce exposure or vulnerability).  

A statistical measure denoting the average recurrence interval in time that an event (e.g. an in-river water level) of a given magnitude equalled or exceeded (when considered over an extended period). While it is true that a 1 in 10-year event will, on average, be exceeded once within any 10-year period, this does not imply that it will not reoccur for ten years. The chance of encountering or exceeding such an event in the next 10 years is approximately 65% - the so-called encounter probability (see for example Sayers, 2015).  

An individualistic risk-sensitive model of insurance is one where individuals’ payment into the ‘risk pool’ is proportional to their level of risk, as with private motor or travel insurance.’ It contrasts with solidaristic, risk-insensitive models or ‘forms of insurance where those bearing lower levels of risk contribute to the support of those bearing higher risk, as with the UK National Health Service’.

O’Neill, J. and O’Neill, M. (2011) Social justice and the future of flood insurance, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, page 17.

Sensitivity refers to personal biophysical characteristics which affect the likelihood that a heat wave or flood event will have negative health and welfare impacts. For example, older people tend to be more susceptible to the effects of high temperatures.

Lindley, S., O’Neill, J., Kandeh, J., Lawson, N., Christian, R. & O’Neill M. (2011) “Climate change, justice and vulnerability”, Joseph Rowntree Foundation Report, York

Which places are disadvantaged?

Social isolation refers to an absence of meaningful social ties. These are ties which can provide a range of forms of support, for example someone to help in a crisis, someone to listen to problems or to provide comfort, someone to relax with and be appreciated by (Tomlinson et al., (2008); Ferragina et al, 2013). Social isolation may lead to feelings of loneliness but is not synonymous with loneliness (Steptoe et al, 2013).

Ferragina, E., Tomlinson, M and Walker, R (2013) Poverty, Participation and Choice. Joseph Rowntree Foundation 

Steptoe A, Shankar A, Demakakos P, Wardle J. Social isolation, loneliness, and all-cause mortality in older men and women. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2013; 110: 5797–801

Tomlinson, M., Walker, R. and Williams, G (2008) Measuring poverty in Britain as a multi-dimensional concept, 1991-2003 Journal of Social Policy 37(4) pp597-620

The system of interconnections between people which support personal relationships and interactions. 

Social vulnerability is a matter of how external stresses impact on well-being. How vulnerable an individual or group will be to a climate related event depends upon not just  their personal sensitivity to the event, but also environmental and social factors that lead to losses in well-being.

Groups of people who have shared characteristics in terms of their social vulnerability.

Compact areas with similar social characteristics used in Northern Ireland for reporting social statistics, for example the census. These contain on average approximately 800 households and a population of 2,000.

Surface water flooding has been defined as the situation “when heavy rainfall overwhelms the drainage capacity of the local area”¹. The 2010 the Flood and Water Management Act includes any moving or standing water which is on the surface of the ground before having entered artificial drainage or sewerage systems or natural watercourses². Howeverm definitions can vary, for example, to include “flooding from sewers, drains, groundwater, and runoff from land, small water courses and ditches that occurs as a result of heavy rainfall”³.

Environment Agency (2009) Flooding in England: A National Assessment of Flood Risk 

UKPGA Section 6 

Defra (2011) Surface Water Management Plan Technical Guidance

In the context of the Health and Social Care Act (2012) A Sustainable Development Management Plan (SDMP) is a current board approved document that assists organisations to clarify their objectives on sustainable development and set out a plan of action.

Public Health England (2014)

Thermal comfort is a subjectively defined state of mind where an individual feels neither too warm nor too cold. For the purposes of the British Standard BS EN ISO 7730, this is ‘that condition of mind which expresses satisfaction with the thermal environment.’ A person’s thermal comfort is determined by:

Air temperature (i.e. how hot or cold indoor and outdoor spaces are at a particular point in time)

Radiant temperature (heat given off by a warm object, e.g. the sun, a radiator, an oven)

Air velocity (e.g. drafts/breezes)

Humidity (i.e. moisture in the air, e.g. from weather conditions or internal sources such as drying of clothes)

Clothing Insulation (e.g. a key element of adaptation is being able to modify clothing to improve thermal comfort)

Metabolic heat (e.g. linked to activity rate, or some illnesses and medications)

Differences in the factors above means that levels of heating and cooling required to achieve thermal comfort can vary markedly. In recognition that there is no uniformly applicable threshold of comfort, The Health and Safety Executive HSE considers that a reasonable limit is to have a minimum of 80% of building occupants thermally comfortable in a work environment (What is thermal comfort?) Differences in thermal comfort within buildings can be exploited to help satisfy different comfort levels of building users, e.g. within residential homes (see the Building Comfort for Older Age report from the University of Manchester's Conditioning Demand project project).

UKCP09 provides probabilistic climate projections for UK land and marine regions. They are ‘A projection of future absolute climate that assigns a probability level to different climate outcomes’¹ for:

1. Annual, seasonal and monthly climate averages.

2. Individual 25 km grid squares, and for pre-defined aggregated areas.

3. Seven 30 year time periods.

4. Three emissions scenarios.

5. Projections are based on change relative to a 1961-1990 baseline.²

1. Probabilistic climate projection
2. About the climate change projections

Vulnerability of an individual or group is characterised by the degree to which an external event converts into losses in their well-being. The concept of vulnerability is used to describe the capacities of individuals and social groups to respond to the impacts of adverse events.

Lindley, S., O’Neill, J., Kandeh, J., Lawson, N., Christian, R. & O’Neill M. (2011) “Climate change, justice and vulnerability”, Joseph Rowntree Foundation Report, York

A statistical measurement of how an individual score relates to the mean (average value) in a group of scores. A Z-score of 0 means the score is the same as the mean (average value). A Z-score can be positive or negative, indicating whether it is above or below the mean and by how many standard deviations.